Serbs Retake Border Zone Village

Without firing a shot, Serbian police Wednesday retook a strategic village on the edge of a contested zone in Serbia where a rebel ethnic Albanian offensive last week claimed at least five lives.

There were no clashes with the rebels when the police, backed by two armored vehicles and armed with automatic weapons, entered Lucane. Most of Lucane's 1,000 ethnic Albanians had fled the village earlier, leaving behind only the elderly.

The capture of the strategic village - the first regained by Serbian forces since last week's rebel offensive - brought security troops and the ethnic Albanian militants closer to each other. They are now less than a third of a mile apart.

Lucane is on a main road to Kosovo leading through a three-mile buffer zone. Under an agreement signed last year, Serbian police are allowed only light weapons in the area.

The zone has a large ethnic Albanian population. Militants are demanding to join Kosovo and want independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic.

Last week, violence escalated as ethnic Albanian militants launched attacks into the buffer zone, capturing several strategic points in Serbia proper. The offensive triggered protests by Western governments and fears of more bloodshed in the region.

A high ranking Serbian police officer told the elderly in Lucane not to fear reprisals, and called on them to invite back their relatives. But one of the inhabitants, Rahman Ramiz, said they "feared more fighting."

Yugoslavia's new pro-democratic leadership - claiming the militants are crossing from Kosovo - have demanded that NATO troops stationed in the province to stop the incursions into southern Serbia.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher expressed concern about the incursions and said the NATO-led Kosovo force has been discussing the issue with ethnic Albanian and Yugoslav leaders in hopes of easing tensions.

He said U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright raised the issue with a number of European foreign ministers, including Yugoslavia's, during her visit to Austria that ended on Monday.

"Everybody is concerned about it (the violence) and wants to do everything possible to stop it," he said.

Boucher said the NATO-led Kosovo Force has closed one crossing point in the area and conducted extensive border searches of vehicles and individuals at crossing sites away from the confrontation areas.

"They have detained suspected Albanian militants, and they have increased patrols and the overall surveillance of the ground security zone," he said.

NATO-led peacekeepers moved into Kosovo after the alliance bombed Yugoslavia to force former President Slobodan Milosevic to stop a crackdown on ethnic Albanians.

The violence in the Kosovo border zone has posed a challenge to the new government of Vojislav Kostunica, as the Yugoslav president strives to defend the area without provoking the same international condemnation that accompaied the crackdown ordered by Milosevic.

Kostunica Monday warned European diplomats that tensions in Kosovo could "set the whole region ablaze."

In a visit just hours later to the people in the border zone, at Bujanovac, the Yugoslav president pledged to "defend with all means the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia. When I say this, I mean diplomacy above all."

"This has always been a multi-ethnic area and we are going to respect that," said Kostunica. "Our neighbors living here are Albanians and we will do everything to maintain these relations."

Albanian rebels Monday extended a ceasefire agreement until Friday.

Kostunica early this week played down the down the prospect of the recent violence escalating into a full-blown conflict. "It is not going to come to a war because we are fighting for peace," he said "We are showing that we are for peace because we respect all international documents on Kosovo."

Fears to the contrary have however spurred some Albanians to flee their homes.

An Albanian rebel commander who goes by the name "Legend" says some 800 Albanians crossed the border from Serbia to Kosovo Monday, to escape any new fighting that might break out between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

Those refugees followed a wave of some 1,600 others who arrived in Kosovo Sunday and another group of about 500 who fled to Macedonia last weekend.

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